 Canada:The Loretto Sisters in Canada celebrate 144 years of fruitful ministry in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Many factors forced the closing of the Loretto Christian Life Centre earlier this month, "but the closing will allow us to focus our efforts in the areas of education, justice, spirituality and vocations promotion. Few things have the power to stir the North American spirit like the experience of visiting Niagara Falls. The immense, thundering torrents of water, the rising mist, the spectacular rainbow - these touch the heart and mind of any visitor, and leave an impression that one can never forget. So it must have been for Mother Teresa Dease when, in 1851, she and a companion, Sister Antonio, saw the Falls for the first time.  Even at that early date, having been in Canada for only four years, Teresa had begun to think of a foundation at the Falls, and appears to have done some teaching even while she was recovering her health there on her first two trips to the Niagara region. Her hope was to become a reality in 1861, when Bishop John Joseph Lynch, in fulfillment of his own dream to have a place of prayer overlooking the Falls, obtained sufficient property not only for the Sisters but for a community of ‘regular clergy’ on an adjoining piece of land. We know, now, of course, that those ‘regular clergy’ are the Carmelite Fathers, who have gifted us with their friendship and assistance from the earliest days. Yet the arrival of the first Lorettos in Niagara was marked by the same kinds of problems the first five Sisters had encountered upon their arrival in Toronto in 1847: no one to meet them at the train and nothing prepared for their arrival, yet they were welcomed by a surprised parish priest, Father Victor Juhel, and accommodated in his own home until the old hotel, Canada House, was ready for occupation.
Who were those pioneers? We know their names: Joachim Murray, Elizabeth Devine, Bernardine Gorman and Bede Dempsey. One sister came with Teresa from Toronto, and met up at “Hamilton Junction” with Joachim Murray and her companions from Guelph. From Hamilton they travelled on to Niagara together, a little band of women prepared to embark on a new mission, but what their early days were like in that old, somewhat refurbished hotel we can only guess. How did they get down to the river for water when the winter mist had turned everything between the Convent and the river into a sheet of ice? When did they plant the orchard, a few trees of which still remain? Where was Rosary Walk? What was it like every time they carried one more of their number over to the little plot beside the Church of Our Lady of Peace? Which ones of the community members planted those huge trees, a few of which still stand? How did they feel when finally the ‘north wing’ was completed? What was it like on the occasion when royalty came to visit?
Among all those unanswered questions we do have accurate, first-hand accounts of the dreadful, terrifying fire of January 10th, 1938, from Sisters who are still living: Sister Pauline Wilson, who was responsible for the littlest boarders, the ‘babes’, at the time, and Carlotta Willick, not yet a member of the Institute at the time of the fire, but with her own pertinent memories of that event. Pauline recalls that she “woke the little ones from their first sound sleep of the night, wrapped each one in her robe, and telling them to keep their heads down to avoid inhaling the smoke, led them down to the Girls’ Dining Room, where they would be safe. But a fireman came along to tell us that we needed to move again because we were in too much danger from the fire, and we went down to the Sisters’ Dining Room. From there we were moved to the area under the ‘north porch’”. Eventually all the pupils were evacuated to Toronto, while Pauline and several others spent their first night in the home of the local dentist! Carlotta, who had not yet entered the community but worked at the convent, had a different concern: three of her sisters were either pupils or employees at Loretto. So she says that her chief anxiety was to “make sure that the three others were safe and then, unable to telephone our family, I put them in a taxi around midnight, and sent them home.” Meanwhile, Carlotta herself had been handed a box (presumably containing the community’s money) from the bursar’s office, and had been instructed to guard it with her life, since looting had already begun, and truckloads of blankets and pillows were seen being carted across the bridge to the other side of the river. In fact, Pauline can remember going back through the convent with another Sister, a day or two later, accompanied by one of the Carmelite Fathers who was carrying a club, in case they were accosted by any looters. There are probably many more stories from that night of the fire. Everyone knows – and it grows in the telling – the story of the Carmelite students coming from next door to help rescue the valuables, and with more youthful male adrenaline than usual, managing to get the huge library table outside – and yet unable to move it again the next day! One additional story which was overheard at the recent Open House was told by a former pupil, who could remember how precious the glass top was to that same library table, and how a team of cleaners would come specially from Toronto each year to bring it back to its pristine condition. Yet, on the night of the fire, the glass top was retrieved from the burning building and casually propped up against a tree! Several of the Sisters were eventually accommodated at the small convent behind Mount Carmel Monastery, and within a few days Sisters Pauline and St. Jude (Celestine) Bast were teaching the Junior Grades in the present-day community room with a divider to separate the two classes, while Loyola Street was teaching the secondary school pupils elsewhere in the north wing. Meanwhile, the Sisters and boarding school residents at Loretto Abbey in Toronto were asked to “move their beds over” to make room for incoming Sisters and boarders evacuated from Niagara. Who can begin to count the number of young women – and later, young men – who received their education in Loretto Academy and Loretto High School? There must be official lists of graduates from those 121 years of education, but there would be countless others who came for a time and moved on to other schools, influenced even for a short while by the spirit and culture of Loretto education. And how many graduates of Loretto Academy sent their daughters, who in turn sent their own daughters, to be educated at Loretto-Niagara? Every member of the Canadian IBVM province would have her own memories of Niagara, and some of these were shared over the delicious meal provided by our friends from the Sheraton Hotel next door. Most of us were fortunate enough to spend some vacation time there as novices, unaware that Teresa Dease herself had begun the tradition of a summer holiday in the area so many years before. What a precedent, and how much we appreciated our opportunity to holiday there! The tone and activities of those vacations differed, depending on who was director of the novitiate, and some Sisters recall long hours pitting plums and working with other soft fruits while others of us remember walking over the Rainbow Bridge (long before the days of terrorists and required passports) to the American side of the river for ice cream. Almost all of us have spent some time at the Christian Life Centre, as the Academy became known after the school closed, taking advantage of the wide variety of retreat experiences that were offered. So many lay women and men have had similar opportunities: for an evening, a weekend, a week-long or even a month-long retreat time. Many other Sisters have very happy memories of living at Loretto and teaching in the separate schools of the Peninsula, and we can look back with pride – and gratitude – at our contribution to Catholic education in the Niagara region And now, after 144 years we bring this aspect of our ministry in the Diocese of St. Catharines to a close. To allude again to Mary Wright’s talk of Sunday, the vineyards of the Niagara region are planted, watered, harvested and pruned; this is our time for pruning. Yet in the midst of our sadness, the celebration was filled with a spirit of joy, of gratitude, of hope. This grieving but hope-filled spirit was beautifully expressed in the ways in which the liturgical celebrations of Saturday and Sunday gathered so many themes and recalled so many moments of the great history of Loretto-Niagara. In that lovely womb-shaped Chapel, with its windows looking out to the old maples (some of which were beginning to take on autumn colours), that old-but-new Chapel with its green glass panels reminding us of the flowing Niagara River, with its altar and ambo made from an earlier generation of our trees, with its Celtic cross recalling our Irish roots, we sang and prayed and danced our way through the story, and laughed and wept – and remembered. Who could fail to be moved by the ritual of flowing water both at Saturday’s prayer service and Sunday’s Eucharist? Who could not be touched by Mary Wright’s gentle invitation on Saturday to keep our eyes on the larger picture of IBVM life: a Final Profession in Ireland that same day, the 50th anniversary of Loretto High School in Sacramento, the departure of two Sisters from England for Albania, to work with women who have been the victims of trafficking? We heard allusions to prayer ascending like the rising mist, and the references to Niagara Region vines that need to be pruned almost to nothing, year after year, in order to bring forth a bountiful harvest? Who could not appreciate Doryne Kirby’s exuberant dance of thanksgiving even as we grieved the loss of this sacred place? Would we have believed the number of women who have joined the Institute from Loretto-Niagara until Carlotta Willick read the names in the Litany of Thanksgiving? And all weekend IBVMs and guests remarked on the magnificent rainbow visible from Loretto Centre during the whole of Saturday afternoon, as visitors streamed through the front door (and a wedding party chose to use the front entrance as a backdrop to their wedding photos!) During the whole of the weekend I found myself wondering what Teresa Dease would think of all this, this holy ground which she loved so much and where she asked to be buried. After one hundred and sixteen years, even her remains had to be moved and re-interred in a new resting place at Fairview Cemetery of Niagara where a number of other IBVM Sisters are also buried. This re-interment took place in the presence of Carmen Diston and the Niagara community during an adapted Rite of Christian Burial and the singing, as is our custom, of the Salve Regina. Perhaps these words of hers are prophetic as we move on to serve the mission of the Institute in other places, in some other way: We should act like travelers who make no account of the distance they have gone but of what remains until they reach their journey’s end. Teresa was always a woman of faith; so are we. We all know what a privilege and a gift it has been to have a convent overlooking Niagara, to work there, to pray there, to enjoy its beauty. Are we now invited to experience a different kind of gift, a more painful one - that of moving forward to another form of mission, a work that is still not clear? Are we meant to be like the waters of the Niagara River, always on the move?
Helen Cameron, IBVM September 28, 2005 |
